Mark Cuban Saved the Greenville St. Patrick's Day Parade: "I Didn't Want to See it Go Away"

Tell that quivering liver of yours to relax: The Greenville Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade marches on -- thanks to a guy who knows a little something about spring parades.

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has cut a $40,000 check to the Greenville Avenue Area Business Association to save the parade, while pledging another $25,000 to the parade's scholarship fund. GAABA President Jorge Levy reached out to Cuban via email on February 8. He wrote back exactly seven minutes later -- "Can't let it die," he told Levy -- and pledged the full amount. The money's already in the bank.

"It's a Dallas tradition that I have really enjoyed," Cuban told me via email today. "I didn't want to see it go away."

The parade started in 1979. It was supported financially by the Observer from 1997 to 2010, but in recent years, as the city required more police and more barricades, the cost of the parade sky-rocketed from less than $50,000 to close to six figures. The paper pulled out last year to concentrate on an annual St. Patrick's Day concert up the road, and this year GAABA was short about $40,000, its organizers said. If they didn't raise it by Friday, they said, they were pulling the plug.